I've got a 1tb Seagate external hard drive that I've had for about 4 months now. It's always worked perfectly and I've had no problems whatsoever with it.
However, two weeks ago, I formatted my computer. I reinstalled the same version of Windows XP Pro with the same CD even, installed all the drivers for the motherboard, wifi device, keyboard, etc etc, until everything was basically at the same point it was before I formatted.
Only one thing has changed - my external hard drive is working at extremely slow speeds. It's plugged into a USB3 port (although I don't think it's USB3 compatible) as it always has been, and yet, I can't figure out what could be causing the slowness.
I think it might be a USB problem and not one with the hard drive, because when I plug my phone in and try to move files onto it, it also works pretty slowly.
I've been trying for a few days to figure it out, and I've even gone to such lengths as buying myself a 1tb internal hard drive, which arrived today, only for me to realise that I needed to move all the files from the external onto it - which is going to take hours, if not days.

Go into the properties of the device and enable something in there, I forget what it's called - it will make it a bit faster, but it will also make it more likely that you lose data if you don't safely remove it.

External hard drives weren't built for speed, they were built for backup and portability convenience. The maximum theoretical speed for USB 2.0 is 60 MB/s, though it rarely reaches that level due to protocol overhead. The maximum theoretical throughput for a SATAII drive is 375 MB/s, which is basically crippled by the USB 2.0 interface.

The only way to get near native speeds on external drives is to either use FireWire or eSATA, with eSATA being the fastest since the drive doesn't have to convert back and forth over the FireWire bus.

Go into the properties of the device and enable something in there, I forget what it's called - it will make it a bit faster, but it will also make it more likely that you lose data if you don't safely remove it.